Public safety institutions (local, State and Federal) are mandated to provide services to victims of crime as well as a continuance of crime prevention activities. Responsibility for these service commitments, including responding to emergencies, are usually assigned to a limited collection of trained officers and officials. When criminal acts occur, these officials must constantly evaluate the incident priority and deploy resources based upon the level of emergency and the potential for suspect apprehension.
Due to a higher demand than capacity, the response to lower priority criminal incidents is regularly delayed or neglected indefinitely. This causes degraded service levels, higher crime rates in certain categories and a continual strain on the limited number of officers who are available. As an alternative, some institutions employ representatives who possess a lower level of training that may respond to the incident location, or provide services via a call center. These methods still require staffing of qualified individuals and the associated cost of employment. While reducing the burden on the “officials,” a significant amount of manpower and the attendant costs are still required under the current response paradigm.
In view of the above, more efficient/effective methods and systems to responding/managing call-ins for emergency or other related events are needed. Methods and systems which address these and other deficiencies in the above-stated paradigm are elucidated in the following description.